The Financial Times and McKinsey & Company Business Book of the Year Award Shortlist

The shortlist was just announced for the 2016 Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award. It has all come down to:

• What Works: Gender Equality by Design by Iris Bohnet, Belknap Press
• Alibaba: The House That Jack Ma Built by Duncan Clark, Ecco Press
• Makers and Takers: The Rise of Finance and the Fall of American Business by Rana Foroohar, Crown Business
• The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living Since the Civil War by Robert J. Gordon, Princeton University Press
• The 100-Year Life: Living and Working in an Age of Longevity by Lynda Gratton and Andrew Scott, Bloomsbury
• The Man Who Knew: The Life and Times of Alan Greenspan by Sebastian Mallaby, Penguin Press

From the press release…

Lionel Barber, editor of the Financial Times, said: “The remarkable range of books this year include a heavyweight biography of Greenspan, a lively exploration of policy dilemmas around longevity, a historical inquiry into the productivity gap, and an argument for righting the balance between finance and industry in a modern economy. Readers will find much to debate and many practical solutions.”

Rodney Zemmel, McKinsey & Company's Managing Partner, Northeast U.S., added: “This year’s shortlist explores the clash of forces that businesses have to navigate today, from demography to technology change to how to get the most out of talent. Rather than just laying out the problems, the authors offer interdisciplinary thinking and an intriguing range of potential answers.”

The judging panel, chaired by Lionel Barber, includes:

• Mohamed El-Erian, Chief Economic Advisor, Allianz; Chair, President Obama’s Global Development Council, (winner, 2008, When Markets Collide)

• Herminia Ibarra, Cora Chaired Professor of Leadership and Learning Professor of Organizational Behavior, INSEAD

• Rik Kirkland, Partner and Director of Publishing, McKinsey & Company

• Dambisa Moyo, Global Economist and Author, Non-Executive Director, Barrick Gold, Barclays, SAB Miller, and Seagate Technology

• Shriti Vadera, Chairman, Santander UK; Senior Independent Director, BHP Billiton and Non-Executive Director, AstraZeneca

The winner will be announced at a dinner ceremony on 22 November at the National Gallery in London, co-hosted by Lionel Barber and Dominic Barton, Global Managing Directorof McKinsey & Company. Baroness Dido Harding, CEO of the TalkTalk Group, will give the keynote speech. The winner of the Business Book of the Year Award 2016 will be awarded £30,000, and £10,000 will be awarded to each of the remaining shortlisted books.

Previous Business Book of the Year winners include:

• Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future by Martin Ford, Basic Books (20150
• Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Belknap Press (2014)
• The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon by Brad Stone, Little Brown & Company (2013)
• Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power by Steve Coll, Penguin Press (2012)
• Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty by Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo, PublicAffairs (2011)
• Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy by Raghuram Rajan, Princeton University Press (2010);
• The Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World by Liaquat Ahamed, Penguin Press (2009)
• When Markets Collide: Investment Strategies for the Age of Global Economic Change by Mohamed El-Erian, McGraw-Hill (2008)
• The Last Tycoons: The Secret History of Lazard Freres & Co. by William D. Cohan, Broadway Books (2007)
• China Shakes the World: A Titan's Rise and Troubled Future—And the Challenge for America by James Kynge, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (2006)
• The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Friedman, Farrar Straus Giroux (2005)